Pats Shuffle Bears` Image

January 15, 1986|By Bernie Lincicome.

And so, the Bears finally got what they wanted. At last they get to be the bad guys.

The mission, Mike Ditka`s favorite characterization of what the Bears are about, is now to kick Cinderella in the gut, a chore for which the Bears are eminently qualified and for which even they may not be forgiven.

If it had been the Raiders, football`s version of the Manson Family, or the Dolphins, the high-tech ballerinas of the air age, the Bears could have growled off to the Super Bowl with sentiment and vengeance on their side.

But who should show up with mush in its mouth and three gift-wrapped tournament triumphs under its arm but a team even more sympathetic than the Bears, a team that has never made an enemy but itself, a team that can trace its failure further back on the calendar than even the Bears, a team for which underdog is not a term but a residence, a team from a place with more rust and as much ice as Chicago. Yes, the surprising, grateful, enterprising New England Patriots.

This is a date so blind it ought to be held in a cave. Turn the lights on the Patriots and the first thing you want to ask is, who else was hurt in the accident?

These guys make the portrait of Dorian Gray look like a swimsuit poster.

If the Patriots were a horse, you`d shoot them.

The Bears had worked so hard to become America`s pet, balancing arrogance and confidence, lunacy with eccentricity, rebellion with defiance, finding in each victory a confirmation of family and the work ethic.

They had every right to expect that, in the end, they would have some glorious wrong to put right, some important value to rescue. They should have at least been able to make the National Football League safe for fat guys and designer sweatbands. Something.

Compared with New England, what are they now but posturing mercenaries, peddling hamburgers and hatchbacks, soft drinks and toilet paper, hustling accounts unavailable to the late-arriving, geographically--and media--deprived Patriots?

The Bears are going to be looking across the line of scrimmage at beggars, bereft of pedigree and privilege, just exactly what they are supposed to be, without any chance that America will understand when the Bears turn them into chowder.

Knocking off New York (twice), humiliating Los Angeles, erasing San Francisco, destroying Dallas is the stuff of nobles. Crunching imposters, again, is the work of bullies.

The Bears are now grim muggers lurking in the bushes to gobble up Little Red Riding Hood for being innocent, about to pounce on Goldilocks for being drowsy.

When the Patriots made the Super Bowl, the Bears went from the bottom of the beanstalk to the top, no longer Jack and his tiny hatchet but the giant and his appetite.

The Bears aren`t the Little Engine That Could, they are the Monster Who Ate Foxboro.

The Bears are landlords foreclosing a mortgage, about to toss orphans and their furniture into the dumper.

The Patriots are a team coached by accident, not vision. Raymond Berry, the nicest of men, sort of stumbled into a recipe waiting to be stirred. He is neither feared nor adored but simply understood. His greatest talent may be his own innocence, which encourages and organizes advice. Make genius out of that.

For Ditka to put away this man is no more an achievement than whipping the Venus de Milo in arm wrestling. The last notch on Ditka`s belt should have been Don Shula, to hang there with Tom Landry, Bill Walsh and the sinister puppeteer, Al Davis.

What will Walter Payton do with so much respect? Is anyone really going to argue that Craig James is the back of tomorrow? Marcus Allen should have followed Eric Dickerson onto the stage beside Payton.

Jim McMahon vs. Tony Eason? Put that up in lights and you couldn`t turn a giraffe`s head. Now Dan Marino . . .

Ah, why go on with this? The Bears are stuck wearing the black hats, with nothing to win but a football game.

In all their imagined insults, even the Bears could not have expected that the ultimate revenge of the NFL would be to send them the Patriots.